Shades Within Us

Inkskinned-2

Whoever had done this had known it.

If I’m going to admit that humans do anything better than us, it’s food. Ruste’s cold climate limits biodiversity, but Khronos and its entire subsection dedicated to greenhouses does not have that problem.

My mouth watered every time I passed Kichi shops, but if I wanted to become a Commoner I could not rely on my own people’s goods. Scouring the back alley groceries and Chinese butcheries I amassed a collection of meats, fruits, spices, and dairy products. Only I learned the hard way my digestive system wasn’t compatible with almost half the foods I tried. After crawling back from the brink of death, I decided to stick with goods packaged separately for Kichi.

I was in one of Khronos’ alleys, eating noodles and spiced dumplings, when I heard the commotion. Everyone glanced up at the noise as I swung myself off the rickety stool, angling my antlers away from a neon-glare of adlogs for ski resorts and wellness spa centres for a better look. Ah. Of course. It was two Kichi arguing with a shop owner. And plastered on the shop wall was a sign that refused service to Kichi.

This was not going to end well.

“All shops in this street have to sell to us,” growled the first Kichi. Ashen-skinned and built like a mountain range, his form was only matched by his companion, whose curved arms were bound with thick knots of muscle. They both had the white facial tattoos of the Reaping clan, a clan of wealth and privilege. Even back on Ruste, they were used to getting what they wanted.

“Not mine, buddy. We were here before you stole an entire street for your own shops. You’re drawing away customers.” The owner was a pot-bellied man with raisin eyes. If I could smell the stress and fury in his sweat from over here, then the two Kichi cornering him sure as the voids could, too. “You folks butchered that guy last month, now you want service?”

The ash-skinned Kichi’s chest swelled with damaged pride. “Do you know who we are?” he boomed.

The shop owner poked him directly in the chest. “Don’t know, don’t care.”

They ground their teeth. It was a wonder the man was not choking on his own entrails already. “It’s not worth it,” I said, sliding beside them. The cacophony of adlogs, blaring traffic and seethe of the city should have drowned my voice out, but it sounded loud and clear in the alley.

“You’re siding with the human? A human?” The ash-skinned one locked his antlers with my stumps. He was fully grown, twice my age, drenched in pride and fury and blood so strong it had soaked into his head.

“If you hurt him, you’ll make us all look bad,” I managed, pushing with my own antlers. A small crowd gathered. “He’s not worth it.”

“Eh? And let him walk away with his head held high? Ha!” He’d switched back to our language now. His rancid scent and the tight curve of his mandibles told me his clan’s pride would not let him walk away from this offence. Especially not from a human. He drew his head back and spit.

I let him. The saliva slid down my face and into my lips. I stomped down on the Kichi instinct to strike back. What would Julia want me to do?

“It’s weaklings like you who let us be treated like animals.” His shoulders trembled with rage.

His friend’s stinking breath was hot on my neck as he blocked my escape. “You suck up to these lying sycophants,” he said “You’re worse than they are.”

I couldn’t dodge his blow. The bodies of my dead sisters burned behind my eyelids as I dripped to the wet pavement and curled as his boot slammed into my stomach, into my face. I murmured the banned words of our culture as the assault continued. He went for my organs, my ribs, stamped on my fingers. I choked on my own breath. Something cracked. One of my front teeth went flying in a spray of blood. A blow to the back of my head slammed my forehead to the ground so hard I nearly passed out.

Then it was over. “Disgraceful,” he spat as the two of them departed. I smeared dark blue blood from my face, my bruised body shaking as I scooped up my bloodied tooth. Kichi never back down from fights. But if I reacted they would have killed me, and then vented their rage on the next person they met.

I was about to hobble away when I felt a trembling, but firm hand on my shoulder.

The shop owner. “I’ve got bandages and medjel in the back,” he croaked, lifting me up by my arms.

I stared at him out of my rapidly closing eye, wanting to flinch from his touch. But I went.

As we entered, the owner peeled down the sign that had started this. We were both very aware that everyone was still watching.

“Huh. Don’t think that’s ever happened before.” Natakus made a show of studying my face. His blinks were long and heavy from lack of sleep or intoxication. Or both.

“You say that about everything,” I grunted, scratching at a scab.

Natakus tapped a curved nail on the bottle. “Drink that. It’s good for you.”

It probably wasn’t, but I forced the bitter drink down my throat. “It tastes different from back home.”

“Heh. Everything’s different from back home.”

Outside, Kichi were scattered along makeshift benches and chairs along the plaza; the males knocking shoulders and showing off, the way Kichi do. The only illumination came from our cheap electricalights and the glow of adlogs flitting across flexiscreens like water, drenching us in the glow of advertisements for human entertainment and products. The ceiling had been set to a sky stained blue with stars. It was not dissimilar to Ruste’s.

I started to wonder just how much of our situation was owed to our own stubbornness? Killing that shop owner wouldn’t earn the people’s trust; it’d send us ten steps back, right into the blood-thirsty feuds that had wiped out entire clan lines. When we discovered we couldn’t win against the humans, we went right back to fighting each other. I hadn’t left my home and my sisters just to find the same thing happening here.

“Relax, Atlas. It’s not worth bothering to adapt to a world that hates us.” Natakus was smoking another rheda. Was this the fifth or sixth one he’d smoked today?

“If we think that way, then we got this chance for nothing.” I thought of how the shop owner’s hands shook, stained with my blood as he patched me up; our alien smells filling each other’s noses. Thousands like him around Khronos refused Kichi service. Could they have their minds changed about us, too?

As Kichi custom, I’d given him my dislodged tooth to remember me. Judging by his expression, it wasn’t something a human would have done. “We need to show we’re better than that.”

Natakus impaled the still smoking rheda on his largest antler and lit up another. “Maybe we aren’t. You remember what we did in the war.”

“That was a different time.”

“Not for everyone.” Nakatus pointed with his roll to a hololog flickering above us. Another dead body. A council governor this time. “It can’t be anyone but one of our own.”

Ah. My insides turned sour. “There are other ways to make a home for ourselves. .”

“What do you mean?”

No one was watching. I unzipped my suit, exposed my skin. Nakatus’ rheda froze in his mouth. “How did you get that in here?” His face lit up with warm memories and nostalgia as he traced a series of words along my chest, touching the curves and the loops and the squiggles. “Actually, I don’t care. We can’t lose this, Atlas. You need to get it into Khronos’ system. It will make such a difference.”

I twisted my mandibles. “I hope you have suggestions on how to do this?”

“Nothing of the sort, no.” Then Nakatus was all serious again, taking long, deep drags from his rheda until it burned out. “But you need to find a way. For all of us.”

I was working my way through the stack of novels, sitting hunched on my bed under the buttery glow of the lamp like I’d done when I was younger. While I didn’t always understand them, the words and phrases in human novels, the building blocks of culture and speech and communication, made me ache for my own language with a longing deeper than hunger. Keeping one hand on the book, I ran the other down my ribs and thighs, tracing the familiar ink cursive that made up block letters in a vertical line. My one, true possession from home, and I was going to hold onto it for all it was worth.

You can tell me anything, Julia had said. That is not something that comes easy in a culture overrun by feuds and conflict, even inside your own clan. There’s a military hierarchy ingrained into Kichi from childhood, one that urged me to fight back against those Reaping Kichi. I’d never have lived down the shame if I’d remained passive back home. But my appeasement had saved lives. And I wouldn’t make progress if I didn’t keep fighting against that tradition.

Which was why when Julia came to my room later that week, I showed her what was on my body.

Her face went as pale as a Ruste snowfall. Would she call security?

She very calmly and very slowly said, “Why are you showing me this?”

“You wanted me to trust you.” Her acidic stench burned in my nostrils. Anger. Fear. Confusion. “So I’m showing you something that is important to me.”

That pain in her eyes again. Deep-rooted, but raw. “Atlas, assimilating means you abandon things that are no longer part of your world.”

“You told me that letting go did not mean I’d have to give my heritage up completely.” I thumped my chest. “This is my anchor. If I have a foundation to stand on, I know I can become a Commoner.”

Julia’s smell lessened as she sat on the small couch. “Trust is a two-way street, Atlas. Tell me why these words are so important to you.”

My muscles tightened. Could I even tell a human this? Any other Kichi would balk at the idea.

But this was what I needed to do. I sat beside her. “It was near the end of the Hacking war.” I breathed out slowly. “I was with my blood brothers in a squad, advancing on a building where human soldiers had holed up. Krung, our chieftain, deployed an explosive we called Spore, a toxic white powder that burns through skin and into the organs and brain. It was his signature weapon.”

Her smell sharpened. This was hard for her, but she kept her voice low, neutral. “Were you armoured?”

I nodded. “I was sweeping through the building for the bodies of soldiers. But we couldn’t find any. Then I felt something hard and brittle crunch under my feet.” I blinked heavily, pushed the words out through my chest. “It was a child’s arm. It was still smoking.”

Julia had gone very still and very silent. Was she going to leave, turn me in like any other human might? But she said nothing. Not judging, just listening.

“We were wrong,” I continued. “If we’d been less eager to rush in, we’d have realized the building wasn’t an encampment for soldiers. It was a safe house for children. Mothers. The injured, the sick and disabled.”

Julia swallowed and she turned away, rubbing her face. Could she not stand to even look at me? These were her people I’d killed, innocents who could not even use weapons, young children who could have lived for so much more. Her breathing was sharp and shallow, in tune with mine. But she straightened her spine, prepared to keep listening to me. “How many?” she asked.